


Tangled and Bright

by JustJasper



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Cole POV, Conflict, Friendship, Gen, Human Cole, M/M, Sex, Trauma, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-21 00:12:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4807583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustJasper/pseuds/JustJasper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian pulls The Iron Bull into a kiss, and they're happy and needing and scared at the same time. Their hurts go quiet when they're together, and Cole has trouble hearing them. It's nice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tangled and Bright

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a story about Cole watching Dorian and Bull having sex, and ended up as a character study of Cole, themed around Dorian and Bull. 
> 
> This fic references/intersects with [An Old Solution](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3960790), but you don't have to have read that for this to make sense.
> 
> Big thanks to [sunspeared](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sunspeared) for betaing this story!

**“It is compassion, the most gracious of virtues, which moves the world.” - Thiruvalluvar**

Dorian smoulders in the morning sunlight, warm and comfortable as he saddles his horse. It's in his chest, like the fire lit the night before still burns.

Something is different. Cole doesn't notice it at first, distracted with the Inquisitor pressing an apple into his hand. She never forgets that he doesn't have to eat, but he's glad she feeds him, too. His pain is different to how she feels it, he thinks, but sometimes he feels the echo of his body – and not his – eating itself alive. He shares the apple with his horse, who he calls Daisy because Varric thought the name with fondness when they first saw her in the stables.

Cole knows he should be careful about where he looks and what he touches, but they are his friends and they are loud a lot of the time. He knows them the best, knows how to pull the threads apart, and he is getting better and better at untangling without tearing.

Something is undone in Dorian that has Cole thinking as everyone sets off from Skyhold, following the caravan of supply wagons. Hurts get untangled without his help, but he knows this is part of a larger one that Dorian doesn't like to think about.

He finishes braiding Daisy's mane, turning hand over hand until it holds together with no tie, and presses his palm along her neck until what was bubbling settles. Animals are different, and they don't give their hurts shape like people, but they still feel them.

“Dorian?”

Dorian's dracolisk likes him as much as he likes her, but neither of them can say it. The mounts fall into step beside each other, and Dorian tips his head towards him.

“Mm?”

“Are you happy this morning?”

“What a thing to ask.” When he laughs, it doesn't catch on anything. “I'm happy as a man can be, heading to some Maker-forsaken battlefield aside.”

Cole smooths his fingers out along his thighs, letting Daisy lead the way as he reaches out without reaching. She knows when to follow the group.

“Knowing they know, nameless eyes curious, laughing, but no hatred.”

“Cole,” Dorian says sharply, looking around. Nobody else is looking. He sighs. “I was a fool to think you wouldn't know, wasn't I?”

“He helped a hurt.”

The Iron Bull is far ahead, riding with Vivienne, but he is thinking about Dorian.

“It made you happy, when he kissed you. That healed a hurt, that he didn't turn away. Would-be kisses against necks, jaws, once a hand gripping too hard, when you forgot it's not done.”

Dorian's hurting again, pulsing like a reopened wound, but a small one. That happens, sometimes, to help.

“Yes, well.”

“The Iron Bull wants to help. He sees your hurt, too.”

“That's worrisome.”

“He wants to help in a different way to me.”

“Quite.” Dorian's voice is small, and he scans the group for The Iron Bull's large shape. When he finds it, the corners of his mouth tug at something, and he is warm again. “Have you ever had any interest in that sort of thing, Cole? Physical pleasure, I mean?”

“No.”

Sera thinks he's dangerous, but also a child. She talks about sex as if it's a joke at his expense, and he doesn't explain that he understands, because she has a lot of fun. When she's thinking about him like he's a child, she's thinking about him as a person, too, and that's better.

“It'll probably save you a world of trouble down the line.” Dorian's smile isn't because of the happiness Cole felt earlier, it means he doesn't want to let the hurt show. Cole smiles back because he's happy to know that even if he didn't untangle it, Dorian hurts less.

\---

He's curious, so he watches.

They're in the Oasis, and the nights are warm. He perches on a rock and watches as The Iron Bull slides a hand up the inside of Dorian's thigh. His body responds like people's do under those kinds of touches, the way blood listens to a wanted touch. Cole thinks his body could, too, even if it's not a want, if someone touched him like that. It's a body like theirs, but unlike too. More like theirs, more and more. He wonders what it would be like if he needed help in that way, thinks about what it would be like to feel what rolls off them in waves when they are alone together. It might be like eating: he doesn't need to do it, but it's nice to do.

He wonders, but doesn't turn to wanting.

Dorian pulls The Iron Bull into a kiss, and they're happy and needing and scared at the same time. Their hurts go quiet when they're together, and Cole has trouble hearing them. It's nice.

“I'm going to be shitting sand for a week,” Dorian says, as The Iron Bull kneels between his legs. He's naked on a rock that's still warm from the daytime sun, sensing, savouring, safe.

“You're nice and tight, stay clenched and you'll be alright.”

“Easy for you to say. You don- oh _fuck_ , Bull!”

The Iron Bull takes Dorian into his mouth. It matters that he wants to, and that it doesn't cost him anything for The Iron Bull to do it; nothing is expected in return.

The Iron Bull has learned him quickly, knows what he needs, but thinks he's being selfish. Dorian should be able to have this with anyone, every man who ever laid him down. The Iron Bull wants to give enough for him to need what he does, but not him. Cole doesn't understand why The Iron Bull wants to be a _thing_ , and it's caged in where Cole can't reach it without tearing all the threads. He wouldn't like that. Cole wouldn't like to do it.

Dorian makes soft sounds, and he wonders how The Iron Bull knows they're good sounds when he can't feel what Cole can. Dorian holds his horns and keeps his mouth on him, and his hurts are still. The Iron Bull knows this, even though he's not like Cole, and that's why he does it.

“Stop teasing, we'll get caught.” Pain flares, but fades soon after, because Dorian stops thinking about shame and ruin when The Iron Bull pulls his mouth back.

“You want me to make you come?”

“That's the point of this venture, I assumed.”

Cole almost laughs, and presses his mouth against his knees to make no sound. The Iron Bull smiles, and doesn't laugh either, even though he wants to. It's true, and it's untrue.

“You want me to suck you until you come?”

“Yes, but I want to finish on your ridiculous face.”

“You got it.” The Iron Bull uses his mouth again, and Cole can't help but lean forward so he can see. They're both wound up, like a rope pulled taut and straining, and he feels the echo of what they do. It's not the same, he doesn't think, but they are like a beacon in the dark, pushing out all shadows. Cole is not a shadow.

“Bull!”

Cole is expecting what happens next, because he understands how these things work, but it still makes him start when Dorian presses himself against The Iron Bull's lips and streaks his face with messy, pearly lines. He feels the ripples of the pleasure Dorian does, the way it feels to be allowed that without shame and without cost, tight in his chest.

Dorian kisses away the semen, using the task as a reason to save The Iron Bull's lips for last. He thrums with the same sensation as the first kiss Cole saw, relief and longing and touching on a hurt, thinking about a desire that used to be dangerous that is now something normal.

“Sand everywhere,” Dorian murmurs, and The Iron Bull hands him his discarded clothes. Dorian stops him with a hand against his cheek, thumb running over a scar that makes The Iron Bull think of mud and rain. “You?”

“Nah.” The Iron Bull remembers it's true and untrue. “I'm good.”

“I want to.” Dorian doesn't understand.

“Here?”

“Perhaps not. There are benefits to sharing a tent, however.”

Dorian dresses himself as The Iron Bull looks around. He doesn't see Cole, because Cole doesn't want to be seen. When they're done Dorian falls into step beside The Iron Bull and lets their arms bump together. They both want a tiny thing which is more, but they’re too aware of their own hurts for it.

Cole smiles until he can't see them anymore, and then follows a nug trail back towards camp after them.

\---

The Herald's Rest is quiet, because the Chargers are away and everyone is busy. Nobody is listening to The Iron Bull and Cole, who sit alone while The Iron Bull drinks. People can get sad when they drink, and it makes the hurts closer, easier to reach out and touch. It's hard not to see the things on the surface when it's just them.

“Safe. Magic moves and it should be like a warning but it's not. Why do you tell him when it hurts you?”

The Iron Bull aches, but his smile doesn't falter. He drinks from his tankard, and Cole traces wood patterns on the table.

“What d'you mean, kid?”

Cole has been thinking about it a lot, especially since the first time he watched them, and all the times between, when they're talking or training or pressed against a wall behind the tavern.

“You tell him he doesn't have to stay, but it doesn't feel the same as before. It matters when he doesn't and when he does.”

“I don't like to tie people down.”

Rope is tight, he pulls it taught and Dorian feels free with his hands tied above his head.

“You tie Dorian down a lot.”

“Bad choice of phrase,” The Iron Bull says, holding up a hand. “If he wants to stay, he will.”

“You want him to. You didn't at first, because it's easy to be a thing even when that thing is hands and mouths, but then it mattered. Why don't you ask him to stay?”

“I don't mind what he wants to do, I'm adaptable.”

“You know what he wants, and you give it to him.”

Cole still thinks about how The Iron Bull knows when people are hurting. Hurts reach out and colour everything, and he sees the things that Cole hasn't learned, hasn't needed to know when he can reach in. He understands words when the feelings with them are wrong, like Cole, and what people mean when they lie, like Cole, but he knows _why_ , even when he's only in his own head to untangle them. He found other ways; he says _'Ben-Hassrath, kid'_ , but Cole thinks of little Ashkaari who knew when the other children were hurting, and helped them.

“I try.”

The Iron Bull isn't saying the truth, but the hurt is right there, knotted up and ready. Cole plucks at it.

“You think of Dorian like he's a tide. He rolls in. You hope it would take an impossible shift in the world to change it, but when he rolls out again you want to chase the sea to where it goes. You were happy to wait for the waves before, but now it's not enough.”

“If you're gonna pry, kid, at least make sense.”

He says it because there is no other way to say it; The Iron Bull doesn't think about it plainly. He's good at making it so his hurts don't catch in his chest, better than most people are at doing it.

“You take him in your mouth, and promise you'll do it again. It's not a trick, but you think he needs it because he's too afraid to stay. You give him a reason. You're sad when he doesn't take it.”

“I'm not sad about it.”

It's not a lie, not really, not when he doesn't know what's real.

“You are. You wake up alone and you're sad when you're alone. Any body would do, once, but now it matters that it's him. You stopped offering your bed to other people because they're not him.”

The Iron Bull isn't angry, even though he glares at Cole over his tankard as he drinks. The silence is a challenge, and it's not a game but Cole thinks of Varric looking for tells.

“The last time he kissed you, you thought about the Qun. You laughed because you didn't feel guilty. After he left you thought of his name on a list of transgressions against the Qun in the hands of someone who would teach you to be Qunari again, and you _hated_ yourself for that. I can still feel the hurt, it hasn't gone away.”

“Every man he ever fucked in Tevinter probably thought of him as a 'transgression'. I don't want to make anyone into that.”

“But he is. The Qun doesn't like mages. They're all rules you've broken, but Dorian is different. You have a purpose, and everything fits even if it's breaking the rules, except him.”

The Iron Bull's hand twitches and he looks into his mug as he lifts it to his mouth.

“Yeah.”

“Oh no,” Cole says, as he feels the wound opening. “No, I was trying to help. I tore it, I wanted to help!”

“It's okay, Cole, you're right.”

The Iron Bull is loud, even as he only sits and drinks his beer in silence.

“Reports to write. He wraps his hands around your horns and you forget he's a tide, and you are Hissrad. Down, drowning, doubting, and after the storm he won't be a harbour at all.”

Cole wants to help, but he doesn't know where to start. Old hurts fade into the background as the new one swells and spills over, and he can't touch a thread without it tangling, and he can't tug without tearing.

“Bull!” Sera isn't silent but Cole doesn't notice her until she's perched on the table. “Ugh.”

It's the only thing she offers in his direction, but she can't help that she shows him the fear. She doesn't trust him here, when it's quiet and friendly, when The Iron Bull lets them be people and Sera thinks about how to make them happy, and not how to make them bleed.

When it's blood and not-people, she trusts him. He goes where the knife needs to be, or where Sera needs the knives to be so her arrows can get to the right place too. He likes it when she forgets what he is, and isn't scared of him.

“You want to help me with something?” Sera asks.

The Iron Bull is happy to see her because he thinks it'll hide the hurt, and it's not true but Cole understands enough to know he doesn't want him to help any more.

“What're you planning, Sera?”

Cole leaves with The Iron Bull's hurt in his head, and he stands on the highest parapet to think about the way he made the hurt open, change. Worse?

\---

There's a hole in The Iron Bull's wall, and Cole can see them through it. The pain has only grown since the Storm Coast, when he thought his friend might break open. Cole made it worse, then a dreadnought on fire made it unbearable, and he hasn't been able to fix it; The Iron Bull puts up walls every time he tries, and he can't help without help.

The Iron Bull moves carefully with Dorian under him, rolling their hips slowly together and apart, arms as towers either side of him. Dorian is not small, but The Iron Bull is so large and he knows he can be something that hurts. Usually that's okay, he knows how not to, but now it makes him ache.

The Iron Bull was never so quiet the other times Cole watched them. Dorian knows, fingers spread wide on The Iron Bull's back, his heels digging in to hold them close.

The hurts have no shape like this, like mud stirred up on a riverbed. Cole doesn't know what to take first or what to touch to begin to make it better.

The Iron Bull's hand slips up Dorian's sweat-damp chest as they move, over his heart. It pounds against his palm and for a brief, bright moment he thinks of how he made that. Then the hand slides upward, to his throat on the way to his face, but the muscles of Dorian's neck against his palm are too much for The Iron Bull to bear. He goes still, hand around Dorian's neck as he thinks of Seheron; in his mind bones crack under his fingers, a breath, dead eyes in the dark.

Dorian puts his hand over The Iron Bull's before he can move it away. Dorian knows.

“I'm not afraid of you,” he says. Their bodies are connected and still, and he holds The Iron Bull's hand around his throat, firm but not choking.

Cole stays still because even if it looks like a hurt, he knows it's something else for them.

“I'm not afraid.” An echo in the cavern being nothing left in The Iron Bull.

“I could hurt you.” The Iron Bull isn't lying, and a truth is only true if you know it. Fingers over fingers squeeze.

“You won't.”

“Dorian-”

“I trust you.”

The Iron Bull is stronger than Dorian, he could move his hand, but the weight of it is an anchor.

“I don't want to hurt you.”

Dorian is so sure, and he speaks so tenderly.

“Then you won't.”

“I'm Tal-Vashoth now.”

He doesn't explain tiny corpses and the tang of the Fade. No mercy.

“You are Iron Bull,” Dorian says. He brings his other hand up to cup his jaw, and his legs burn but he keeps them wrapped around The Iron Bull because that is important. “I trust you with my life, Bull. With all of me.”

Cole hugs his arm around his legs and forces himself not to move, not to reach out to try and sooth the pain, raw and ripping through The Iron Bull's chest as Dorian squeezes his hand, makes The Iron Bull's squeeze in turn over his throat.

A mindless weapon, a thing, broken bones and the smell of blood washed out by rain.

“ _Dorian_.”

The Iron Bull moves his hand from under Dorian's, and replaces it with his face against his neck, eases against him on the bed, like the distance between them was a mile too much.

“Dorian,” he says again.

In a handful of breaths, Dorian running his hands slowly over The Iron Bull's back, something changes; The Iron Bull believes the words, trusting truth, and they move again.

Sharp edges melt to smooth ones, and Cole doesn't know whether they will stay, but he's happy and he wants to tell them how it feels to watch them do what he couldn't.

“Fuck me,” Dorian says into the quiet, only the wind and their bodies for them. They don't hear each other, but they are learning. The Iron Bull is quiet still, but Dorian thinks it will be okay.

They move together for a long time; they are a heartbeat, together but out of step.

His curiosity for what they looked like was satisfied long ago, and now he knows them, knows that Dorian goes first and then The Iron Bull after. They think more clearly with nerves alight than any other time, think words that are too wrapped up in hurts to say aloud.

“You staying?” The Iron Bull is sure enough to dare to ask.

“Mhmm.”

They are hot and damp and tangled up, all smooth edges, sated and safe. They did that for each other, without his help.

Cole feels something pull behind his eyes. He doesn't need to sleep, but he thinks he could, here, as they lie in each other's arms, one drifting into the Fade and the other skirting its boundaries, shallow and controlled. Ever since Varric told him what he could be, he feels more things. Happy is easy, a bright burst in his chest, but this is new. It's warm all over, and as he watches, he floats in it.

\---

They mark the day Corypheus fell with feasting and hope, and promises in the night. Slowly things slip back to something like before; the urgency is gone, but threat and task remain to be done. The Inquisitor still needs them.

The moonlight is dappled through the trees in the Emerald Graves, and the night is full of song. He follows them because he wants to see them together again, to watch them weave their hurts and heal, hope, happy in each other's arms. Even when they're not naked they're doing the same, fine threads of each other other woven together to make something that covers them.

“Beautiful,” The Iron Bull says. He's not looking at the plants or the trees or the moons and stars through the canopy.

“Yes, all that _nature_ aside.” Dorian has never objected to being called beautiful, but The Iron Bull means _more_ when he says it, and it's an ache to smile and agree with the word, when it's not just _beautiful I want you now_ , but maybe something lasting, long.

“I'll protect you from the scary plants, big guy.”

“Plants are a minor nuisance. I was thinking more about the idea of being interrupted by a giant mid-fuck.”

“We'll hear it coming. Maybe it'll hear you coming, too.”

“Ugh.”

The noise is disgust but Dorian doesn't feel it, feels the swell of everything else in his chest. Cole rests at a crouch in the flora, unseen, as Dorian pulls The Iron Bull down into the grass. It's still warm, and dew won't settle until first light, and Dorian doesn't like nature but what he feels is crisp and clear: this place is right, good, safe with The Iron Bull.

“You'll get grass stains,” he says right against Dorian's mouth, and Cole can feel the ghost of how good it is for someone to care about such a little thing.

“I'm wearing green,” Dorian laughs breathlessly, taking off The Iron Bull's harness. “I'll survive.”

“You just enjoy having something to complain about. Can't complain about grass stains on your ass without everyone knowing how you got them.”

Dorian hums, happy. “As if they don't already know.”

The Iron Bull's laugh rumbles in the space between them, and he turns his head and looks right at the gap in the dark where Cole is. He doesn't see him, but he's not looking for him. All that matters is them and the space between them, a world in a world, and whether there are eyes on them doesn't matter. They've never seen him when he sees them, but more and more they're not scared to be seen. Sometimes, even, it's a small, bright hope.

Cole never had to learn what sex was, but he learned there are patterns, and they all start with wanting. Pieces of a puzzle that fit together in many different ways. Tonight it starts with hands calling blood to gather; it's not magic, but it means something to have that command over each other. Cole's blood doesn't respond like that, but when Dorian is bright and laughing as The Iron Bull twists his hand and kisses his neck, he feel the ripples of it wash over him, that same sensation of being wanted and cared for, the echo of being known.

It's new, to feel it so clearly and it not to ache so much. He concentrates past the way The Iron Bull lets Dorian turn their bodies over so he's below, undressed just enough into the grass, strong enough to stop him, wanting to let him. There's a hurt there, connected and deep, dormant, undisturbed. It's quiet and the edges are smooth and don't tear him, and that is _wonderful_.

“Grass stains on your knees are even more obvious.”

Dorian would usually reply but the pleasure is just there, roiling just in reach. He takes The Iron Bull into his mouth and moans. He can be so gentle, but he isn't, because he knows that Dorian doesn't want that tonight. He puts his hand on Dorian's head and rocks his hips up.

The Iron Bull understands what it means when people look at him, the stories their bodies tell, and helps them, and Cole doesn't, can only untangle the hurts from the inside.

“You're so good at that,” The Iron Bull says. “The fucking best.”

Dorian wants to be good, and he pushes down, takes him further. Cole brushes his fingers through the grass, turns over Dorian's small hurt in his mind like a stone the river has mostly smoothed over. He wants to be good because he is good, because he matters. The Iron Bull would never hurt him.

They are distracting; he almost doesn't hear Sera's light tread and the way her arrow slides against her bow as she pulls the string taut.

“I knew it,” she says, a whisper meant only for him, not the clearing. “When they went wandering off, I knew it.”

She wants to hurt him, but not to make him bleed. Hurts are worse when they're intangible, but she doesn't know how to make anything stick to him like she wants. She has an arrow pointing at him when he turns around, and her eyes shine in the dark.

“Are you a pervert? I've never even seen you piss, I thought you were a weird thing without parts.”

She doesn't want to ask, but she can't stop herself. She doesn't want to think of him like they could talk and ask and answer together.

“I have a body like you know a body,” Cole says quietly, knowing she won't like being reminded they are alike in form.

“Yuck!”

Sera glances past Cole to make sure the sound hasn't disturbed them. She feels something like he does when he sees them, like she knows they're helping each other's hurts stay quiet.

When she looks back, she points with the the arrow that she's thinking of putting in his crotch, now she knows he has parts to hurt.

“Come w'me, creepy.”

He's too fast for Sera to injure him, but there's a hurt in her throbbing raw and ready, and he thinks it's because of him. He doesn't want her to hurt worse, so he turns slowly and walks back toward camp. Sera keeps a few paces behind, and her eyes don't leave him all the way to the Inquisitor's tent.

Cadash is resting, but not sleeping. Sometimes Cole feels her nightmares in the night, a thing that shouldn't be, but mostly she lets herself become weary so she doesn't have to be in a place she's never known before.

She has a dagger in her hand before she knows who they are, stepping into her tent. Recognition softens her.

“What's going on here?”

Sera's voice strains to stay level.

“I found it watching Bull and Dorian.”

Cadash keeps hold of the dagger as she stands, almost struggling. The Herald's tent is bigger here, but the sides of his hat still brush against the material, and he takes it off, because she likes to see his face.

“Watching them what?”

“Sex,” Sera hisses.

The Herald lurches, worry, wit, wonder, but doesn't move.

“What?”

“It was spying on them, watching Fussybritches sword swallowing.”

Cadash's face is not soft when she looks at him now. “Cole, is this true?”

“He wasn't swallowing a sword.”

He knows that people say things that mean other things, they're not lies, but clues. He understands them more and more, but he thinks now if he doesn't know, makes her think it, the storm of hurt inside the Herald won't grow because of him.

“This ain't the first time, neither,” Sera continues. “It's been perving on them, hanging around and listening outside their tent and their room, sneaking off when they sneak off. Thinks it's stealthy. What does it even want, being creepy?”

Cole doesn't lie.

“I wanted to see.”

Sera sparks, and she it's the loudest whisper she can make, because she wants to shout.

“What does a demon need with seeing them up the Dales? It's up to something! Everyone treats it like a person now, and stopped looking for demon shite!”

“I don't want to hurt anybody.”

“It doesn't _care_ if it hurts anybody!” Sera's voice cracks. “They didn't go of frolicking the the forest to be seen by anything but nugs! That's for them, not _it_ to have. But it thinks it gets to peek at whatever, and that's not caring!”

She thinks about a time she was paid well for watching, for telling. Wrenched away from the door by the ear, words so stinging sharp that the gift didn't feel like a kindness. _That is not for you to know_. She doesn't tell.

“Varric tried to teach it and it should have learned, but it doesn't! That's the problem, innit? People thinking it looks out for them just because it gets jolly off poking in people's pain, or whatever it does. It doesn't _care_ about them!”

Cole cares, and Sera cares, but hers is not like his. She drops old eggs on the soldiers who say 'Magister' and 'Ox' too loud at the tables outside The Iron Bull's room. When Blackwall goes to bathe, she tells him a story about giant spiders in the stream until they return, boots muddy and faces flushed, undisturbed. She talks and teases and laughs, so they'll know there doesn't have to be shame.

Sera hurts to think of them hurt, and she thinks what Cole does is hurting. Wounded, wrong, but not in everything; he does hurt them, sometimes, to help. Sera doesn't want them to hurt at all.

Cadash closes her eyes and takes a breath. When she opens them, she doesn't look at him.

“Sera, go back to the watch. Cole, stay.”

Sera glares at him. “If I catch it snooping on them again, on anybody, I'm aiming right between the eyes.”

“No you won't, Sera, if you want to stay at Skyhold.”

Sera found a place where she could be, and the Herald has never before told her it could be a place without her. The hurt tears, leeching into everything as Sera's bow drops to her side, the arrow held hard enough to snap in her fist.

“Am I clear?”

Sera looks at him, and she wants him to see her anger burning through her, but her face doesn't do what she wants; hurt not hard, and she looks away. “Yeah.”

He can still feel Sera's pain when she leave, and it would be easier to feel if it were meant for him, and not for herself.

_Did I ruin it? Where else have I got? Who else?_

“You.”

The Herald turns to him, and she's loud in his head even though her voice is level, hurting and disappointed and ashamed and – no, that's wrong. It's not her, not her hurt and her shame, but his. “Don't watch people have sex, Cole. I can't believe I'm having to say this. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

She aches. She is so tired, longing for the dreamless sleep she knew her whole life. He wants to help, but he's already made her hurt.

“Patrol the perimeter. Stay away from Sera. Leave the Bull and Dorian alone.”

He waits for something. He doesn't know what it is, but it doesn't come. Cadash nods her chin and points with her dagger at the tent flap.

“Go.”

Cole goes.

He is just him, but people want more. Things were simple and he made a mess of them, piling hurt on hurt that he can't fix. They don't fade with the voices, only go quiet as they're smoothed over and pushed down, forgotten by minds that protect themselves with forgetting. He doesn't know if he can be more than he is, or if he's just this. Not enough.

\---

He still watches them, when they sit around the fire and talk, laugh, lull, but he doesn't watch them have sex. The Inquisitor told him not to, and he will do as she asks. It's not hard to stay away, when their hurts have gone so quiet in the weeks since they returned to Skyhold.

So feeling Dorian hurting, clear as the summer sky, is a shock that makes Cole slip, tumbling down the last few steps to the lower keep and muddying his knees.

Someone is pulling the edges of it and they fray under hands that don't know what they're doing, that Dorian thinks about it in the dark and takes it into the Fade; too many hands to fight, holding him. Stop. I want to _stop_. Take it easy, you'll like it. Relax. Relax. I'd rather have a drink. _Relax_.

He thinks about Dorian and then he's there, perched on the end of The Iron Bull's bed. Shared, in all but the declaration.

“Too many hands. Holding, hurting, I said yes but it's not working, this feels wrong.”

They are naked and they startle, with Dorian lying on The Iron Bull. Dorian's backside has a faded bite mark on the left cheek in the shape of The Iron Bull's mouth.

“Hey, you okay?” Worry rises in The Iron Bull, because he notices the things Cole does.

The sit up together, taking bedsheets to cover parts Cole is paying no attention to. Dorian is annoyed, but he's not afraid. Cole didn't expect that.

“What? It's nothing. I just thought about a thematically similar incident that went south, it's fine, certainly not as bad as Cole is making it sound.”

He sits on the bed as The Iron Bull softens his anger.

“Kid, didn't the Boss tell you not to pop out at people when they're in private?”

He doesn't lie, mostly.

“She said I shouldn't talk to people when they're having sex, and you're not having sex, you're only talking about it.”

“You were eavesdropping?” Dorian huffs.

“I could feel the hurt. It's raw and untouched and I want to help.” They're angry. “I'm sorry.”

“We know you want to help,” Bull says, “but if you want to be more like a person, you've got to expect people to be mad at you if you burst in on them.”

“But you're not mad, you're worried. Worried about Dorian's hurt, and the worry hurts you, because you don't know if you've ever echoed it. How can you know what not to do if it's just in Dorian's head? He has to share it, but letting it out might make the hurt worse.”

“Cole, stop.” Dorian's edges aren't fraying, and there's a stillness that Cole didn't ever think about Dorian having. “You don't need to help me with this one. Bull will help me, in time, when I share it with him.”

He smiles, because Dorian understands. It's hard when they don't hear everything like he does, to understand how to untangle things.

“Yes, he will. You soothe each other's hurts now, more than when it was fleeting, frantic. I don't hear your hurts as much anymore, but it was different today, so I wanted to help.”

“You don't have to worry, Cole. We're alright.”

“Yes. I should go now. You don't want me to watch this time, but sometimes you don't care if I see. You never call it making love, because you used to think it could never be that. But now it's because the love's already there, and you don't need to make it.”

Unsaid, but known. Perfect until they can be brave.

“Right.” Bull blinks several times too fast. “Thanks for that. New rule, okay Cole? If you want to talk to us when we're in here like this, you have to knock on the door and wait for us to say you can come in.”

He understands. The Inquisitor wanted him to understand before, but she didn't say enough for it to be a lie if he said he had followed her orders.

“I will try to remember to do that, The Iron Bull.”

“Good lad. Come to the tavern tonight, we should test if you can get drunk.”

Cole tips his head up as he thinks about how many hurts he's untangled in the tavern.

“I don't know if I'd like that. People can get very sad when they're drunk.”

“We'll see, huh?”

It can help, too, when people drink. It makes the pain surface, where he can reach it better. Cole considers drinking as he takes himself to the battlements near the stables. The mounts don't hurt in the same way, and sometimes it's easier to listen to them.

Dorian's pain is like candle in the morning, engulfed by The Iron Bull's light, and Cole tries not to hear it. He has helped where he can, and now they'll help each other.

\---

The Herald is tired.

She rubs a finger over a scar that climbs her chest and clavicle. Before that, she wears her hair free and wild, and the coils bounce black as she ducks and weaves. A man grabs her by the hair and tries to stab her in the chest, drags the blade up over her collar. Laughing, bleeding, _you should have cut my throat_ , his own knife in his neck. She pulls her hair up now, braids the beard that she lets grow at the back of her jaw. It's an old hurt, one that Cole has tried to help before, but he thinks she wants part of it to stay. Hurting helps sometimes, but doesn't really understand why.

“I can't believe I'm doing this.”

She can.

Cole takes off his hat because she likes to see his face, and she smiles at him. He likes when she asks him to come to her rooms. Waiting, watching, wanting it to be true but not trusting to hope, then finds it's real and she tells him to come to her room if he'd like to talk. He likes to talk to her, because she listens even when she doesn't understand, and she tries but doesn't tangle when she can't.

She pushes a bag of fudge into his hands, something that was a gift, but it wasn't given to make her happy. He doesn't need to eat, but there's so much to discover in the sweet and sharp and sour of food. He takes one and chews slowly.

She takes up a a seat opposite him, leans her elbow on the armrest, and then her cheek on her hand. Sometimes she asks him about how he's feeling, or what he's been doing. She likes to know because she likes him, not just because she thinks she has to. Today, she doesn't.

“You remember that I told you not to spy on people having sex, when we were in the Graves last?”

“Yes.”

“I didn't talk about it with you beyond telling you not to. Considering... things. I think we need to talk about it. I should have spoken to you about it instead of sending you off with just that. I was tired. I'm sorry, Cole.”

She's not angry, he doesn't think. But it's a hurt, something at herself. Disappointment and doubt, about whether she's enough.

“You don't like dreaming.”

She shakes her head. “No, I don't.”

She didn't walk the Fade until she was the Herald, and now spirits flock to her light. She doesn't understand, can't, and she is afraid. It's connected to a deeper hurt, aged but unhealing. They were friends, and she trusted him like she thought he trusted her. She blames herself that Solas couldn't stay, and Cole can't help that without hurting them both.

Before she can slip away, he offers something true he thinks she needs to start. “I watched because I wanted to understand.”

“You wanted to understand sex?”

“I wanted to see.”

“You wanted to see them have sex?”

“Yes.”

“Is that why Bull tried to set you up with Candy?”

“She told me to call her Marguerite, after I helped her. The Iron Bull thought I wanted to try sex.”

The Inquisitor watches him eat fudge, and Cole pays attention to how she pushes away the hurts and thinks of him instead.

“ _Do_ you want to try sex?”

“I thought after Varric helped me, after you helped me, that I could.”

“Jut because you can, doesn't mean that you have to.”

“I know. The Iron Bull paid Marguerite to have sex with me because he thought I wanted it, but I didn't. I wanted to help, but The Iron Bull did too, he just got it wrong.”

She sighed. “This is complicated for us that aren't spirits. It must be pretty complicated for you to understand, too. It makes sense you're curious about sex.”

“It feels nice when they're together.”

“You do? Your... body?”

“No... I don't think so, not in the same way. If it's connected to their pain I can feel it, like an echo. They heal each other's hurts. He kisses him and it feels like home, but he can't say. _Kadan_ , he thinks. He can't say it, because Dorian will ask, and then he might not stay. Selfish to hide it. More selfish to say it.”

She turns her face into her hand and rubs between her eyes. She doesn't like to think she came by the information without earning it from her friends herself.

“Lots of emotions happen when people are intimate.”

“A tumbling turning tide. I want this, I want this for all the time I can. He's not tired of me yet, and hope burns brilliant bright. An echo; no, and not a ripple, the thoughts are both the same and both strong. They're a mirror.”

She sighs, but its on a smile, curving at her mouth as she looks at him.

“Cole, you see a lot more than other people. I know this will always be a part of who you are, but you can't share everything you hear in people's heads.”

“I want to help.”

“I know. But part of living with people, respecting them, means you have to find out if it's okay. As long as nobody is being hurt, you should stay away from people who are being intimate.”

“Sometimes they hurt each other's bodies, but it's a good hurt. It means they're safe.”

The Inquisitor sits up straighter. Cole picks up another bit of fudge.

“I know this is stuff you're having to learn, but I trust you to know the difference between people hurting each other because they've agreed to it, because they enjoy it—”

“He sucks a bruise into his neck to show them all someone is in his bed, and feels proud that he never covers it with cloth.”

“The difference between that and someone being hurt. Forced to do something.. intimate.” The word she doesn't say is painful. The word is painful to almost everyone. “You understand?”

“The Iron Bull always asks, and Dorian knows he'll listen if he says no. He's not afraid.”

The Inquisitor's voice is sharpened but not wielded to wound when she speaks again. “Cole. What have I just asked you?”

He chews his fudge and thinks of a way to say it that is clear, words deliberately chosen, thinks about each one. “I understand. I shouldn't be there when people are intimate. But I should listen if people need help.”

“Good.”

She had a lot of sisters, and was grown before her time, forced to do a mother's work to keep them together. The times it didn't work are a thing long healed over, but not gone. She thinks of him like a son, even if that's an impossible thing. He is not a child, but her pride is like a mother's and he wants her to be proud of him.

“You and Josephine are like Dorian and The Iron Bull. Why don't you have sex?”

She inclines her head. “We're not much interested in sex.”

“But it's the same. You press and pull, secrets shared, you heal her hurts and she heals you in return, like Dorian and The Iron Bull do.”

“There's lots of ways to be intimate with someone.” She smiles, and he thinks she's remembering something nice, but he keeps himself from it. “You've seen them together, it's not all about sex. Even if they tried to keep it that way.”

“They didn't think it could be that, and then it became even more.” The thought makes Cole smile. “They don't say it, but they both know it, now.”

“I know you want to help, but you have to leave them room to help themselves, and each other. You're very good at prodding the right thing – the wrong thing sometimes, too – to get people to start working out things on their own. You do help, Cole, but you can't help with everything.”

“I didn't help Sera,” he says.

“I didn't think you were trying to help her,” she says, and then shakes her head. “It was a little bit of a mess that night.”

“I made her hurting worse.”

“You and me both.” She feels guilty now as she did then, thinks it's her fault, when it would never have happened without Cole.

“I want to help.”

“You can't, always. Not if she doesn't want you to. It's not my place to talk about how she feels to you, but I'm just telling you, that she's not alone. She has friends, like you do. You can't help everyone.”

“I want to.”

Cadash laughs, but it doesn't hurt him. “I know, Cole. I know the feeling.”

She is like him, trying to help. She fixed the sky, and her work still isn't done. He can feel the mark where it pulses under her glove.

“Are you going to be able to do what I asked, Cole? Give people privacy?”

There's enough fudge left for the stable hand who cries because nobody came home.

“I will try.”

She trusts him. Cadash stands and comes over, pulls him down gently by the back of the neck so she can kiss him on the brow.

“Good talk, Cole,” she says, and he closes his eyes to the feeling of her lips against his forehead, like she did the first time, when it was snowing in Emprise du Lion, and they both had blood on their faces and she thought of him as hers.

\---

He cannot ignore when the people are hurting; it's in his nature, it's why his place is the world and not the Fade, where he can help. It's harder still, when the people who are his friends hurt. It's easier now that people whose hurts were important, because they were helping the Inquisitor, have gone. Cole can still feel them if he tries, tied forever now, but not so loud and constant as the people around him.

He hopes someone is putting honey in Leliana's wine. Her name is new, a symbol, a beacon, and the only one who can't return is her Warden gone west. The mercy she wears around her neck is one of few she can give; mercy for magic, no mercy for malice. The world turns and there will be more White Spires, but none by her hand.

He hopes Vivienne is in a place where she is valued. She was there when the end began, and without her the world is lost, but she thinks it might not be enough. Dancing, laughing, turning tables until she's dizzy. He wants, she wants, and Vivienne can be everything again. Needed, nurturing, and never nothing.

He hopes for Solas to find his way to help. The hurting isn't a lie, but he feels like he doesn't deserve it when he left them and took the truth with him. He walks the Fade as close as he dares, but even though she dreams now, he can't tell her why he didn't stay. Everything is like a fog when Cole tries to reach in, other and everything all at once. It's painful to try.

People come and go from Skyhold, and there's always a new way to help.

The snow comes down slowly in Emprise du Lion, melting in the heat of the campfire but settling on the tops of the tents. There's few Red Templars left, and it's calm enough for the scouts to drink beer and talk into the night.

Sera and Blackwall sit with them, drinking and talking. Blackwall nods, but Sera ignores him, even though she hurts, like she has in both things since the Emerald Graves. Cole is glad she has the Inquisitor, and Blackwall, and all the other friends, even if he can't be one of them.

Dorian and The Iron Bull's hurts are mostly still quiet, safe and soothed under each other's hands. He doesn't want them to hurt, but he misses when he helped, and he misses watching them help and hold and heal.

They're alone and it _is_ intimate, but there's no door. Cole slaps his hand against the heavy tent flap three times instead.

“What is it?” Dorian calls.

“It's Cole.”

“What're you after, kid?” The Iron Bull asks.

“Can I come in?”

“Sure.”

He takes off his hat and shakes the snow from it before he goes inside. They're naked, covering themselves with blankets and furs, and the tent smells of sex and cocoa.

The Iron Bull pointed his gnarled fingers at a steaming kettle on a small stand with the light from a fire glyph glowing under it. “You want a cup?”

He sits cross-legged on the floor with them, and they ease themselves together, shoulder to shoulder. They aren't afraid to be seen by him. He used to think it was because he didn't matter, but now he knows that's wrong.

The glazed clay mugs don't come from the same place: The Iron Bull's looks tiny in his hand, red and chipped at the rim. Dorian's is painted blue with flowers, and the the other has a black and red fish crest on it and a story to tell.

“For someone who doesn't need to eat, you have rather a sweet tooth,” Dorian says as he pours water over powder and stirs in milk, and Iron Bull drops guimauves on top.

“I like to taste.” It's a truth, but not a full one. He thinks of the first Cole who ate himself from the inside until it wasn't enough.

“Here,” Dorian passes him the mug. “Is this a social call, or are you here to poke around in our pain?”

He shakes his head. There are hurts he could untangle, things buried and blackened in the dark places they keep them, but he knows that choosing when to help is important. The Herald guided him towards something he was already learning.

“You're happy.”

“Noticed that, huh?” The Iron Bull chuckles, and nudges Dorian, who hums and looks at him with a softness he only allows when they're alone. Cole is happy he gets to see it.

“Lots of people notice. You make people happy. The sky broke open and you found each other where the world could have ended. Happy, hoping, helping to heal people's hurts. You heal each other but you're helping other people, too.”

Dorian turns his face into The Iron Bull's shoulder, eyes closed for the span of a few heartbeats before he turns back to them and back to his cocoa. Dorian has never thought he'd be anything but a warning.

The cocoa is sweet and rich and he only thinks of them when he drinks it. The first Cole never tasted it, so he doesn't think of him, mostly. Cocoa brings a good hurt to Dorian and The Iron Bull, who both think of homes that don't have a place for them, changed, made new and for them, where they made a new place for themselves, together.

“You don't need me anymore.”

“Hey,” The Iron Bull says, aching faintly, “we didn't let you into the tent because we 'need' you, kid. I mean, you're a weird kid, but you're our friend.”

He smiles, because smiles are simple when they're real. “And you are my friends, too.”

“You can be around us without having to do the weird mind reading crap.” The Iron Bull smiles behind his mug. “I know you can't help it, and its useful, but sometimes it's just nice to hang out.”

“You've done a good job shaking things loose,” Dorian says, “but we're hardly the only people in need of your help.”

He's right, but their hurts were sharp and loud for so long it's strange not to hear them anymore. It's strange to want to hear them, just to help.

The Iron Bull stretches out his bad knee. “Give yourself a break, kid, the world isn't ending again. The whole more-human-less-spirit thing isn't just for Wicked Grace games.”

“I like the games! Dorian cheats, and nobody is angry because he's funny and he never lets himself win when they bet real money. Everyone is happy, even if they're hurting. The happiness matters more, when they're together.”

“When _we're_ together, Cole.” Dorian rolls his eyes, but he's smiling too. “Our numbers may have dwindled, but you're one of us. And I do not cheat.”

“Did they change the rules?” He knows they didn't, but Varric says he's funny, when he doesn't think too hard about it. Dorian and The Iron Bull laugh.

“Of course personhood involves jokes at my expense,” Dorian says, but he's smiling. A smile is easy when it's real. The Iron Bull leans down and kisses him, and Dorian does not hesitate to let him press their lips together, gentle and slow.

In this moment, in a warm tent with cocoa steaming in his hand, Cole cannot feel them hurting.

“ **The webs spun by our existence had gracefully overlapped and knotted until you could not have one without the other. We were infinitely intertwined.” - Blakney Francis**


End file.
